Daily Search Forum Recap: December 7, 2009

Here is a recap of what happened in the search forums today, through the eyes of the Search Engine Roundtable and other search forums on the web.

Search Engine Roundtable Stories:

SEOs Freak Out: Google To Personalize All Search Results
Back in February 2007, Google began personalizing search results based on your search history. Google would do so, only when you were logged in. Now, Google announced they are personalizing search results for everyone, even if you are not logged in. Google explains: Previously, we only offered Personalized Search for signed-in users, and only when they had Web History enabled on their Google Accounts. What we're doing today is expanding Personalized Search so that we

Google Custom Search Engine Sitemaps Display Bug
For those of you who use the Google Custom Search Engine, like we do here, you may have noticed that it is having issues reading your XML Sitemap file. Yes, with a Google CSE (custom search engine), you can feed it your pages, like you do with normal web search, with your Sitemap file. If you do that now, you may see an error that reads: Oops! We were not able to retrieve a list

Wrong Local News in Google News? Here is Why.
Over the past few months, there have been sporadic reports on the wrong local news showing up in Google News. One such thread at Google News Help has several comments about the issue by a Googler named Inbal. What appears to be the issue when Google shows non-relevant local news in the local search of Google News is that Google is matching incorrectly. Inbal from Google explains, most recently, the root cause of the issue:

Is Google Censoring Climategate? Google Says No.
A Google Web Search Help thread I have been tracking since November has an interesting history. In short, some searchers are suspecting that Google is censoring the search term [climategate] from the search results. On November 28th, Richard Sharpe asked if Google was censoring the term: If I use Google to search for pages about ClimateGate, it does not put up any search suggestions after I have entered "Cli" however, Bing offers many terms, with

Yahoo & Microsoft Complete Search Deal, Now Waiting on Regulators
We are one major step closer to Microsoft and Yahoo closing on their Micro-hoo search deal which started officially back in July. Yahoo announced on Friday that the details of the deal between Yahoo and Microsoft are final now. Yahoo! Inc. and Microsoft Corporation today announced that the companies have finalized and executed the definitive Search and Advertising Services and Sales Agreement and License Agreement in accordance with the letter agreement announced in July. The

Vote for Your Favorite Internet Marketer: Search Marketer
SEMs should do their best to represent search marketers in this top 100 marketers vote. There are lots of Internet marketers listed on this list, some are SEOs and SEMs, so go vote for them. Shameless plug: If you like, vote for me, I may have the most hats on that list: Barry Schwartz of Search Engine Roundtable, Search Engine Land, RustyBrick (@Rustybrick) If you do not like me, then vote for another SEM. Keep